Good Advice

Abstract Advice is interesting because it is a relationship that is built upon two asymmetries. Advice concerns what the advisee ought to do. For that reason, considerations of autonomy suggest that the advisee has a greater claim on what matters in deliberation. However, the advisor is wiser than the advisee. That suggests that the advisor has a greater insight into what matters in deliberation. These are the asymmetry of autonomy and the asymmetry of wisdom. To account for both, I argue for informed subjectivism. Informed subjectivism is the view that the quality of advice is determined by the likelihood that the advisee would consistently prefer acting on the advice to not acting the advice. The theory captures the asymmetry of autonomy by making the quality of advice based on the advisee’s judgment. It captures the asymmetry of wisdom by making the relevant judgments of the advisee be ones that are informed by experience.


Introduction
The nature of advice has received little philosophical attention. This is unfortunate because the role of advice in practical reason is parallel to that of testimony in theoretical reason. Because of that, examining advice ought to be philosophically fruitful. Moreover, advice is philosophically interesting because it is a relationship that is built upon two asymmetries. Advice concerns what the advisee ought to do. For that reason, considerations of autonomy suggest that the advisee has a greater claim on what matters in deliberation. However, the advisor, at least in ideal cases, is wiser than the advisee. So the advisor usually has greater insight into the matter at hand. We can call these the asymmetry of autonomy and the asymmetry of wisdom respectively. I argue for an informed subjectivist account of good advice. Since advice concerns what the advisee is to do, respecting autonomy requires that the advisee is final arbiter of whether it is good advice. However, we can still account for asymmetry of wisdom by making the relevant judgments ones the advisee would make when his deliberation is informed by experience with the advice.
In this paper I aim to show that informed subjectivism about advice is a theory to be taken seriously. I argue it has clear advantages over some attractive rivals, has a principled response to the most important objection to subjectivism in other areas of practical reason and nicely captures the two asymmetries. In particular, it makes clear why advisees will see themselves as becoming wiser in acting on good advice. Even if all this is true, informed subjectivism could still be false. Perhaps, there is some other rival that better accounts for all that a theory of good advice needs to account for. I am content to show that the nature of advice deserves more philosophical attention and that attention should consider informed subjectivism.
Let me briefly discuss the difference between testimony and advice. Some writers appear to treat the two as interchangeable. 1 They are similar in that both are instances of collective deliberation where one trusts another. The difference is that testimony concerns what to believe, while advice concerns what to do. Now one might reject this distinction by arguing that advice aims at true belief about what to do. This sort of theory of will be addressed later. However, on the face of it, there is a difference because advice is inherently practical. Now there are going to be hard cases that do not fall neatly into either category. Perhaps, the only way to get an advisee to listen is to present the advice as testimony. 2 However, the existence of hard cases does not show there is no distinction to be made.
1 For instance, Elga (2007) and Hills (2009) both move freely from talk of advice to talk of testimony. However, nothing they say prevents them from acknowledging a difference between the two. I know of no argument that there is no difference between the two. 2 Hinchman (2005) discuss some cases like this and when it is rational to accept advice. I argue below the question of the quality of advice is more fundamental than the question of the rationality of accepting it.

What is Advice?
It would be natural here to attempt to give the necessary and sufficient conditions of advice by engaging in conceptual analysis. We could test the analysis by considering our intuitions about possible cases. I am oldfashioned enough to think there is a great deal of merit in such methodology. But it is not clear there is a set of stable intuitions about advice that we need to account for in our theorizing. Instead I want to describe a type of social interaction that would be beneficial, if not unavoidable, for creatures like us. I think it is natural to call this sort of social interaction 'advice'. So I am not attempting to give the extension of 'advice' as it used by all competent speakers, but rather to give the necessary and sufficient conditions for an important type of social interaction.
The type of interaction at issue is a result of our practical and social natures. As practical agents, we need to decide what to do. As social creatures, we interact with others who face the same sorts of questions we do. We should not find it surprising that practical agents who are also social creatures sometimes agree to deliberate collectively about what one of them is to do. This would be a perfectly natural thing to do because we would profit from the insights of others. Because of this, cases where we decide to put our heads together to solve one individual's practical problem seem to be an excellent candidate for a natural kind of social interaction. This aspect of social reality deserves philosophical attention. And it seems fitting to call it 'advice'. No other word is a better fit and no other type of interaction deserves that title more so.
On my account advising occurs when two or more individuals reason together about what the advisee is to do. It is joint deliberation that aims at an intention or an action by only some of the deliberators. 'Reason together' needs unpacked, but the account is not a stipulative definition. It tracks a phenomenon that we need to make sense of in our philosophical thinking. Not all of our standard uses of 'advice' fit this account, but I think that can be explained and I turn to that at the end of this section.
Since cooperation is essential, one cannot unilaterally decide to give another advice. One might argue that shows this definition to be stipulative because individuals often offer advice without consent. We should reject this because it ignores the difference between expressing a normative judgment and reasoning together about what to do. Advising is cooperative in a way that expressing a normative judgment is not. Of course, one might recommend actions to others and one might preface such recommendations with 'let me give you a piece of advice'. But this is very different from when agents come together in order to reason together. 3 There is a difference between those types of interactions and our account of social life should reflect that difference. If we do not require cooperation, then we reduce advice to the expression of normative judgment about another's situation. In doing so, a distinct type of social interaction gets removed from the philosophical scene. That would ignore an important part of social life.
By 'reasoning together' we mean that the parties agree to jointly deliberate about what the advisee is to do. Typically, they deliberate about some narrow range of alternatives. However, we do not want to rule out cases where the advisee is open to more fundamental advice about how to live. This may be rare, but it is not impossible. What the parties agree to consider will be explained in the course of the paper. However, we do not want to rule out total deference to another in our account of advice. That may be irrational, but it is possible.
In advising we put our heads together. The advisor does not dictate. As Hobbes noted, there is a distinction between counsel and command. 4 In a command one creates a reason for action based in one's authority to give the command. In advice the reason for action is not based on the act of advising. Rather there should be a reason that exists independently of one's speech act. What more can we say about the structure of the joint 3 Imagine Carol says to Bill 'let me give you a piece of advice', but Bill slams the door in her face before she utters another word. Now even if Carol goes on to say 'don't be so sensitive', she has failed to give Bill advice. She tried, but failed due to Bill's refusal to hear her out. 4 Schneewind (1998) explains how this distinction was treated by a number of thinkers. deliberation? Both parties agree to adopt particular attitudes to one another that frame the deliberation. The advisor must agree to treat the advisee as an autonomous person to be reasoned with, not a thing to be controlled. This requires believing the advisee is the sort of being that can respond to reasons. The advisor must respect the autonomy of the advisee. By that, we mean she must think that the advisee is not a hopeless judge on how to live. 5 That is, the advisor must accept that the advisee could be a competent judge once advised appropriately. The advisor might view the advisee as practically irrational or unwise. But she cannot think the advisee is a lost cause. Of course, the advisee might be deeply mistaken and need to change how he tends to judge. But it must be the case that the advice not only changes the advisee's judgment, but that the advisee can see that change as an improvement. If an individual lacks the capacity to respond to reasons even in a state improved by advice, then one cannot jointly reason with that person. The activity would have no point. Only a more through-going paternalistic relationship could be warranted in that case.
What attitude does the advisee adopt? The advisee entertains the possibility that the advisor is wiser in the matter at hand. Without this the activity would have no point. This happens in two ways. Initially, an advisee merely consents to entertaining the advice. The advisee consents to hearing his advisor out. At a second stage, after the advisee hears the advice, the advisee can decide to act on it or not. This is a second step of consent when the advisee decides to the let advisor's judgment serve as a supplement to or a proxy for the advisee's practical reasoning. The advisee might realize that the advisor has pointed him to a consideration that the advisee now takes to be a reason. In more extreme cases, the advisee might decide to trust the advisor's judgment without fully understanding the reasons for acting. This raises serious issues about the rationality of accepting advice. We address this below.
Again, one might object that this is not the way we use 'advice'. For instance, parents advise children without the consent of the child. Against this, we should note that not every time a parent tells a child to do something for his own sake is it advice. We can see this point when we reflect on the way relationships between parents and children change through the years. There is a marked difference between the way a parent tells a ten year old to eat her vegetables and the way that same parent will discusses possible careers with a recent college graduate. The difference is that the parent goes from deciding what the child is going to do, to reasoning with the child about what to do. At some point, the parent decides that the child is capable of leading her own life, but is happy to help when asked. The parent transitions into a new role once they decide the child is mature enough to make her own decisions. The parent might disagree with those decisions, but the parent sees that it is the child's life and the child has to decide how to live. It would be natural for the parent to describe this change by saying 'I used to tell her what to do, but now I just offer advice'. It is the second type of interaction that concerns us here. So even if there are cases that involve what some speakers tend to call advice, but do not involve consent, that does not show this account of advice is mistaken.

Normative Assessments and Some Rival Theories
As argued above, advising is an asymmetrical relationship twice over. One aspect of this asymmetry is that the advisee entertains the possibility that the advisor is wiser in the matter at hand. In all cases some measure of authority must be granted to the advisor to make the interaction worthwhile. This returns us to the issue of the rationality of accepting advice. One might be skeptical that it can ever be rational to accept advice. One might think it is always best to think for oneself. But to rule out any form deference in practical matters as necessarily irrational limits our resources in practical reasoning. It bars us from allowing the judgment of another to stand in for our own. It rules out trust in practical matters. However, because of any number of shortcomings an agent may have, he may be a very poor judge in some areas. Perhaps one's partner just has better judgment about finances or fashion. It seems rational in such cases to replace one's judgment with that of an advisor.
I will assume without further argument that it can be rational to accept advice. When it is rational to do so? This issue is difficult because the advisee takes himself to be in a position in need of guidance. That means he needs to figure out whom to trust. Our question now becomes, as Eric Wiland puts it, 'what kind of properties indicate to the advisee that someone's advice is worth trusting ' (2004: 375-376). Hence, we need an account of what properties one ought to seek out in an advisor. Notice though that there are two distinct normative assessments of advice. One regards the rationality of accepting advice and the second concerns the quality of the advice. The questions are related, but distinct. Presumably, it is rational to trust individuals because those individuals tend to give good advice. If that is true, then that we ought to decide what determines the quality of advice before we can decide when it is rational to accept it. Hence we need a theory of good advice before we decide when it is rational to accept it.
Wiland does not take this route and does not directly present an argument for what makes advice good. He focuses on when it is rational to accept advice. He argues that experience and being a good person are two properties that indicate it is rational to trust advisors. He contends that we should look for these properties because of their connection to practical knowledge. For instance, he says that 'life-experience is an important source of practical knowledge' and that good people are 'more likely than others to have practical knowledge ' (2004: 377-378). Wiland seems to think that advice is good in so far as it expresses practical knowledge. 6 He offers no explicit account of practical knowledge, but he seems to take it to be the sort of thing that a virtuous person possesses. That is why good people make good advisors. They are good advisors because they are reliable judges of what one has the most reason to do.
Call this view objectivism. It claims that the quality of advice depends on the objective reasons that support the option it advises. Advice is good in so far as it leads one to do what one has most reason to do. 7 The quality of the advice varies with the strength of the reasons that support it. It is an attractive view. How might one argue for it? One might claim that it is impossible to sincerely advise one to do what one does not have most reason to do. That appears to be Derek Parfit's position. In the course of arguing against subjectivism about practical reasons, Parfit claims, 'we cannot claim to be advising people if we tell them not to do what we believe that they have decisive reasons to do ' (2011: Vol. 2, 281). Similarly, Judith Jarvis Thomson claims that 'there are not two advice senses, or advice uses '. (2003: 170-171) Rather there are just an all things considered judgment regarding what one ought to do. Both seem to take this as a conceptual truth. 8 If it is a conceptual truth, then its denial ought to be a contradiction. Failing that, it at least should be hard to understand. However, the denial of objectivism is neither. In fact it is not even that unusual. It is in no way Moorean paradoxical for an advisee to say 'to hell with prudence! What is the best way to blow a huge amount of money this weekend?' That may be a foolish request, but it is not an incoherent one. The asymmetry of autonomy offers us an explanation of why the request is not incoherent. Agents with autonomy can choose to be foolish.
It does not follow from this case that objectivism is false. Perhaps, such requests are coherent, but still mistaken. But it does follow that we 7 There could be two versions of this view. One could claim that one offers good advice if one advises to do what one's evidence suggests the advisee has most reason to do. Another version claims good advice is determined by what in fact one has most reason to do. The first reading is the one I focus on, but I believe my arguments work against both views. 8 Other objectivists about practical reason are not so sure. Jonathan Dancy remarks that 'we do say, as in giving advice, that though your project is totally irrational, still if you are going to pursue it, this way is much more sensible than that one ' (2000: 42) cannot simply assume that good advice concerns what one has most reason to do. That is a substantive view that needs to be argued for. There are a number of cases that appear to undermine objectivism. People ask for advice about how to pursue immoral or even irrational ends. And it seems we can assess the quality of the advice they receive. When one Mafioso tells another, 'Keep your friends close and your enemies closer' it seems that there is an interesting question of whether this is good advice. This is true, even if we all agree that what the Mafioso has most reason to do is to give up on his evil projects. There are also cases where you disagree with the project of the advisee, but still offer advice. A Politico might say 'it is a bad move to run for President now, but if you are going to, then you need to build a good ground game'. Again, that seems like it might be very good advice. These examples undermine any simple and straightforward connection between advice and what one has most reason to do. Chrisoula Andreou has argued against the importance of such cases. She argues that these are not real cases of advice, but cases of mere intention-based advice or advice where one considers only a restricted range of options. That is, we do not offer genuine advice, but only a kind of conditional advice. I am hesitant to make this distinction. It seems to me the Mafioso and the Politico could be offering good advice, though we might have real worries about the projects they pursue. That is, judgments or morality and rationality might be distinct from advising judgments. If we are going to make a distinction between different types of advising we need to be given some clear reason why we need to do so. Andreou claims that in advice there are 'two approaches that one can take: one can evaluate things from one's system of standards; or one can evaluate from within the other's system of standards ' (2006: 58). She then convincingly argues that an advisor cannot coherently reject her own standards. I aim to show in the next section though that this is a false dilemma. There is a third way that respects both systems of standards.
Nevertheless, one might find the above cases unpersuasive and remain committed to objectivism. In light of that, I present a moral argument against objectivism. Consider the rights owed to an autonomous agent. If an agent is autonomous, then others ought to allow him, at least in some cases, to do what he does not have most reason to do. One should not interfere. Respecting autonomy means to occasionally allow one the freedom to make mistakes. 9 People have a right to do what they do not have the most reason to do. That is, to act in a way there is some reason to act, but not the most reason to act. To deny these claims would be to say interference in others lives is justified any time an agent makes the slightest deviation from what they have most reason to do.
This may seem beside the point because this is just a matter of protection from interference. As we have seen, advice is matter of joint deliberation, so there is no question of unwanted interference. Note though that if an advisee has a right to do what he does not have most reason to do, than surely an advisor has the same right. So it is permissible for two parties to agree to joint deliberation in these conditions. That is, they agree to jointly deliberate, but not to aim at what the advisee has most reason to do. Once the permissible agreement is made, it becomes impermissible to violate it absent special circumstances. So there can be cases where one is morally required to give advice that does not advise the advisee to do what he has most reason to do. This gives us some reason to doubt objectivism. Respecting autonomy means allowing an agent to do what she chooses, even when we disagree.
The objectivist might claim that at most this shows there are some cases where one is morally required to give bad advice. That does not strike me as right though. It ignores the collaborative nature of advice and does not fully respect the asymmetry of autonomy. In many cases we need to defer on matters of value to give good advice. We must constrain what we consider on the basis of our advisee's values. Imagine you are my colleague. Suppose I send you a paper about advice and ask for comments. You think I am mistaken for spending time on such a topic. You judge that I ought to spend my time doing history of philosophy because my work there is much more promising. Suppose you are right. Nevertheless, you may know it is important to me to publish a paper on advice. Since I am your colleague, you ought to respect my decision about how to spend my research time. I am not a child or a fool, so you ought to respect me enough to allow me to decide how to spend my time. 10 You ought to give me advice about how to write the paper I want to write, not what I have the most reason to do. And this is not bad advice that you have to give out of a sense of duty. Rather as an advisor you have to defer to my values in some cases. Of course, we also want to allow for the possibility that good advice might improve the advisee's judgment and we will discuss such cases later on. Nevertheless, some degree of deference is appropriate. Clearly there are limits, but just as clearly there are cases where it is appropriate. Respect requires deferring to the agent about some decisions regarding his own life.
One might worry that we are overplaying the importance of autonomy here. All that respect requires is that we allow the advisee to decide whether to accept the advice or not. 11 We respect the advisee's decisions without letting those decisions determine the quality of advice. However, I think more is required in the joint deliberation that is characteristic of advising. The advisor may disagree with the advisee about what ultimately matters. Joint deliberation does not require complete agreement on questions of value. But unless the advisee is seen as the sort of person who can respond to reasons, there could be no point to advising. The advisor must believe advisee is competent to judge once he has been advised appropriately. There are many ways to lead a good and meaningful life, so the parties may disagree even when all the information is in and the advisee's judgment has been approved by advice. In this case, it would be overly paternalistic to assume that the advisee does not have the authority to decide what matters in his life. Again consider how parents treat a ten year old and a thirty year old. At some point, the parent has to stop dictating and start advising.
An alternative to objectivism that is at the other end of the philosophical spectrum is relativism. 12 The relativist is skeptical that there is a universal standard for advice. Instead, there are various possible standards depending on what reasons one takes into account. There is good marriage advice, good career advice and good legal advice. However, there is nothing that unifies those types of good advice. All advice can only be assessed relative to some standard.
I take relativism to be a position of last resort. If all these different interactions are all advice, then there must be something that unifies them. 'Advice' is not wildly ambiguous. And that which unifies might entail a normative standard for the assessment of all types of advice. More importantly, relativism essentially maintains nothing substantive can be said about good advice in itself. Any question about good advice needs to reformulated into a question about good advice relative to some standard. If that is true then certain important questions have no answer. Suppose you are considering taking a new job and you seek advice from the wisest person you know. The relativist has to claim that the best this person can tell you is that from the perspective of your career you should do X, but from perspective of your family you should do Y. If you persist and ask 'but overall what should I do?' the wisest person you know can't say anything besides 'it depends on what standards you accept'. The problem with this is it turns advice into mere testimony. The advisor can only give accurate information about how the decision will affect various domains of your life. That may be very helpful, but it simply provides you with information and does not help you process that information. For that reason we should look for an account of advice that goes beyond testimony and allows for the possibility of improving your capacity to make a judgment.
Another similar rival would be a purely instrumental account. 13 The advisee determines the end and the advisor specifies the best way to attain that end. The quality of advice depends on the extent to which the advice increases the probability of achieving the end. This account fails for reasons similar to the ones that plague relativism. The instrumentalist cannot make sense of the asymmetry of wisdom. It denies that good advice can lead you to revise your ends. That is, another person cannot improve your capacity for making decisions by advising you. Against this, consider Alan and Betty. Imagine that Alan approaches Betty for advice. Alan cares obsessively about how others see him, while Betty places almost no weight on such things. If Alan asks Betty for advice, it would be wrong for Betty to totally ignore what Alan cares about. Surely, though, there are cases where Alan can learn he should care less about how others see him by taking Betty's advice. He can change what he cares about because of her good advice. I take it this is one of the most intriguing aspects of advice. One might deny it, but that flies in the face of personal experience. It seems to me that I have met people who have improved my capacity to make judgments about how to live through advising me. Many others I know believe this as well. The instrumentalist has to deny this possibility. This implication counts heavily against the instrumentalist.
In this section I have argued we have to settle what makes advice good before we can decide when it is rational to accept it. I have also raised some worries about competing views. I do not think I have shown conclusively that those theories are wrong, but I have given us good reasons to look for another alternative. In the next section I present informed subjectivism and argue it gives the right answers about a range of cases.

The Informed Subjectivism Theory of Advice
Consider subjectivism. Subjectivism contends that a piece of advice is good advice just in the case the advisee judges that it is good. This is not plausible. The advisee takes himself to be in need of guidance and seeks that in his advisor. So the very activity of seeking advice undermines subjectivism. We need to find a way to accommodate asymmetry of wisdom. What I suggest is the informed subjectivism theory of advice. It claims what matters is future satisfaction with the decision in the appropriate contexts. Informed subjectivism claims the quality of advice is determined by the likelihood that the advisee would consistently judge that acting on the advice is superior to not acting on the advice. That is, the likelihood that the advisee would consistently judge that it was good advice if he acted on it or that he would consistently judge that it was good to reject the advice if he rejected it. Note that disjunction is inclusive. If both conditions are satisfied, then it is over determined that it is good advice. However, satisfying one is enough to count as good advice. I will say more in defense of this later. But what matters are the probabilities that some judgment would be made in the appropriate conditions. 14 I should note that the distinctions I make regarding the quality of advice is rather coarse grained. The quality of advice comes in degrees and more fine-grained distinctions could be made where appropriate. The degrees of quality would likely be based on the consistency, conviction, passion and likelihood of the judgment. 15 Another complication that I will set aside is that the quality of advice may be indeterminate if the judgments diverge in enough of the nearby possible worlds. I do not aim specify all these details here. Rather I aim to sketch the big picture. So, I will talk in terms of 'good' and 'bad' advice, but this is a simplification. All I am to establish is what sorts of facts are relevant for assessing the quality of advice. How one weighs these facts in various hard cases can only be hinted at here. Now though we need to say a bit more about subjectivism as philosophical project. Subjectivism has a long and contentious history in practical philosophy. One might be attracted to subjectivism about reasons because it offers a compelling explanation of the connection between reasons and motivation. 16 One might be a subjectivist about welfare because objectivism cannot make sense of the individual relativity of welfare. 17 Objectivists are likely to argue that subjectivism about reasons or welfare is bound to fail because it has far too many counterintuitive implications. For instance, even if you strongly desire to turn on radios that does not give you a reason to do so or make it good for you to do so. 18 We do not need to take any side in those debates here because informed subjectivism about advice is compatible with objectivism about reasons and welfare. One might be a subjectivist about advice because one thinks that respecting autonomy is objectively valuable and that gives us reasons to allow the advisee's judgment to play a fundamental role in what counts as good advice. Of course, one might also be a subjectivist about advice because one is subjectivist more generally. However, it is important to see that these are distinct issues.
Furthermore, informed subjectivism about advice has a principled response to the familiar objections to other forms of subjectivism. To advise one must accept that the advisee is not a hopeless judge of how to live. This provision rules out the obvious counterexamples against subjectivism about reasons or welfare. One ought not to give advice to individuals who could only be satisfied by doing evil or doing what one has no reason to do. If a murderer asks how to maximize the number of his victims and you cannot change his mind, then you should not give him advice. Of course, you might pretend to advise in order to foil an evil scheme. That may even be morally required, but that is not sincere advice. It is deception. As a general moral principle, one ought not to advise the profoundly evil. If an agent is obsessed with turning on radios and cares about nothing else, it is not clear he is someone you should advise. Some other more paternalistic attitude might be warranted. Now we might take pity on him and offer advice about how to turn a maximum number of radios. Informed subjectivism seems to provide the correct standard for assessing that advice. 19 But it many cases it might be better to not advise and instead see to it that he gets the psychological help he needs. Now in most real world cases we cannot be sure if the agent is hopeless, so we might advise in hopes of doing some good. Nevertheless, informed subjectivism has a principled response to the obvious counterexamples. They are ruled out at an earlier stage. 20 Now return to how the theory captures the two asymmetries. It captures the asymmetry of autonomy by making the quality of advice based on the advisee's judgment. Since the advice concerns the advisee's behavior, the advisee remains the ultimate judge of whether it is good advice. It captures the asymmetry of wisdom by making the relevant judgments of the advisee the ones that are informed by the experience of acting on or rejecting the advice. The judgments that matter are not the one the advisee makes as he is presently constructed, but as he would judge if he were better informed by experience. In this way we respect the autonomy of the advisee and let the wisdom of the advisor appropriately inform his judgment.
Note that the quality of the advice does not depend on the actual judgment of the advisee. It depends on a range of judgments the advisee would make in the cases where the advisee becomes better informed through experience. The theory is in no way non-cognitivist. The truthmakers of claims about good advice are the mental states of the advisee in possible worlds in which the agent's judgment is informed by 19 I thank an anonymous referee for making this point clear to me. 20 One might think I am slipping objectivism in the backdoor here, but I am not. It is only an objectivist about value who would make this objection against informed subjectivism about advice. So it is fair game to assume it in responding to the objection. experience. The likelihood condition tells us we need to consider a range of possible worlds. The consistently condition tells us we need to look at a series of judgments in each of those possible worlds. I will say a bit in defense of each of these features of the theory.
The quality of advice depends on how the advisee would judge if he acted on the advice and how he would judge if he did not act on the advice. Why these cases? In the case that one accepts the advice one is in a better position to see its merits. But we also must consider the case of rejecting the advice as well because advisees might be advised not to do something. Consider the advice 'do not date that person'. Imagine that one takes it, but over time dating the person seems even more exciting because it is forbidden. But suppose that if one rejected the advice, one would come to deeply regret rejecting it. So, both cases are relevant. These judgments are informed by the relevant experiences and in that sense improved. In this way we grant the advisor as much authority as we can without compromising the advisee's autonomy. That also allows us to accommodate the two asymmetries. The evaluative standard is determined by advisee's judgment informed by the experience of acting on the advisor's counsel.
The likelihood condition makes the quality of advice depend on the judgments in a range of possible worlds. We need the likelihood condition because things can go unexpectedly. If I advise you to spend your life-savings on lottery tickets, that is bad advice. That is true even if the exceedingly improbable happens and you buy the winning ticket. Likewise, a piece of advice can still be good even if some very unlikely event occurs that prevents the expected good outcome. If I advise you to visit an old friend and you are struck by lightning on your way that does not show that the advice was bad. Any adequate theory of good advice will have to allow for some variance between the quality of advice and actual outcomes because the world is unpredictable. 21 The consistently condition is included because we want to know how the advisee judges over the course of his life. Our assessments of our decisions often fluctuate over time. Informed subjectivism does not privilege any one of these judgments. Rather it looks at how one tends to judge over the course of a life. Imagine you take my advice and you marry Carl instead of Dave. We want to know how you will feel about that decision over the course of your life. That fact that you are thrilled on your wedding night does not entail that it was good advice. However, if you are consistently satisfied with the decision over the course of your life, then informed subjectivism claims that the advice was good. That seems a correct verdict. The consistently condition makes the quality of advice depend on a series of judgments in each of the relevant possible worlds.
On this theory two incompatible pieces of advice could both be equally good. This might at first appear surprising, but it is the right result. Imagine I have to choose between A and B. My mother advises me to do A, while my father advises to do B. Both my mother and father could both be offering good advice because the relevant standards will be different. Perhaps, if I choose A I will be glad that I did and if I choose B I will be glad that I did. This is because in some cases we have more than one option we will be pleased we acted on. Unfortunately, there may also be cases where no matter whose advice I follow I will regret it. Perhaps I will regret doing A and regret doing B in the relevant conditions. This is how it should be. Our theory of advice should recognize that life could present us with an embarrassment of riches or a life empty of promise.
What is relation between morality and good advice for informed subjectivism? We have already seen how the theory handles advice to evildoers. One ought not to give advice to evildoers. So there is good advice that one ought not to give. However, one might worry that there should be a closer connection between morality and good advice. One might think that advising individuals to do the right thing is always good advice. Is this compatible with informed subjectivism? An informed subjectivist could maintain that morally correct advice always counts as good advice. He might contend, on broadly Platonic lines, that advice that leads to morally good action is always judged by the advisee to be good advice if he acts on it. Perhaps if an evildoer took the advice not to be evil he would come to judge that it was good that he took the advice. That is compatible with the theory. However, informed subjectivism does not have to take a stand on this issue. On this account whether morally correct advice is good advice depends on the relation between morality and one's assessment of the quality of one's life. That seems a plausible result.
We need to also to be clear that this account is not a first-order theory of advice. It is not offered as a guide for deliberation. The theory does not claim that we should always tell advisees to make a decision that they would later take to be correct. Nor does it claim that one ought to think only about one's own welfare. The theory presents a normative standard, not a deliberative procedure. We can appreciate the difference by noting that there might be cases where using informed subjectivism as a principle for deliberation would be self-defeating. Perhaps, the only way for you to make what you will take to be a good decision is not to think about yourself at all. For instance, an advisor might tell an advisee to do whatever will make his family happy. Neither the advisor nor the advisee is thinking about how the advisee will judge this act after the fact. But on the informed subjectivism that still could be good advice if acting on it leads the advisee to make what he takes to be the correct decision.
In fact, any sort of first-order advice might be judged as good advice by informed subjectivism. To take a case that may appear to be at odds with the theory, religious leaders often advise their communities to worship God. Moreover, they may insist that one should not do this for any benefit one receives, but because God deserves it. But, that is not evidence against the theory. What informed subjectivism claims is that we assess the merits of the advice by how people would judge in the relevant cases. If worshiping God leads one's to judge her life favorably, then it is good advice. If not, then it is bad advice. Again, that seems to be a plausible result. By itself informed subjectivism does not entail what advice ought to be given. That depends on what the world is like, not merely on the theory of advice.
To further see the implications and merits of the theory, consider again the case of Alan and Betty. Alan cares obsessively about how others see him, while Betty places almost no weight on such things. Alan is fretting about going to a dance because he worries about what others will think of his dancing. Betty advises, 'Just go to the dance and let your hair down a bit'. Alan decides to trust Betty. Imagine he goes to the dance. Initially, he is timid and feels very self-conscious. However, he recalls Betty's advice and decides to give dancing a try. Suppose that in doing so he finds himself swept up in the music and has a great time. In that case, Betty gave good advice. Alan did not know he would enjoy dancing, but he did. That was a bit of wisdom that Betty shared with him. 22 Explaining the possibility of these cases is one of the main virtues of informed subjectivism. Good advice can lead us to see ourselves as wiser and better people. We recognize that our capacity to make judgments has been improved through advice. That explains why we seek it out and value it so much. Informed subjectivism explains the psychological process that allows an advisee to come to see his capacity for judgment as transformed and improved through acting on good advice. It explains how we can come to see ourselves as grower wiser. Relativism and instrumentalism seem to have no prospects for explaining an increase in wisdom. Advice on these accounts might give us additional true beliefs, but there is no improvement in our capacity to judge. All that objectivism can do is insist that we do become wiser when acting on good reasons we may not understand. The objectivist might insist that acting on advice to do what you have good reason to do always makes one 22 However, other cases are possible. Perhaps, Alan is so self-conscious he cannot get swept up in the music. Because of that he dances very poorly and he notices when others notice his bad dancing. He feels ashamed. In this case Betty has given Alan bad advice. She misjudged what Alan was like. This points to the fact that the psychology of advisee needs to be carefully considered when offering advice. wiser. But that is a stipulation, not an explanation. It says nothing about why our minds are changed by accepting good advice.

Objections and Replies
In closing, I consider objections to informed subjectivism. The truthmakers are future mental states of the advisee. What about cases where the advice damages one's ability to make judgments? It seems like really bad advice could lead one to be very bad at evaluating how to live. Informed subjectivism would turn that very bad advice into good advice. And what about cases where there are no future mental states? Suppose I advise you to kill yourself. That is clearly bad advice even though you do not live to regret it. More generally, one might reject the account because it entails that the advisee cannot be fundamentally mistaken. In closing, I will reply to these worries.
Let us start with a simple example. Imagine that a person approaches a cult leader for advice. The cult leader advises the person to join the cult. He does so and the cult leader brainwashes him into being a happy cult member. It might seem that informed subjectivism is committed to saying this is good advice when clearly it is not.
For this to be a genuine case of advice the advisor must be treating the advisee as a person to be reasoned with and not an object to be manipulated. This is important because we do want to allow for cases in which the cult leader is merely pretending to give advice in order to manipulate. For it to be a case of advice the cult leader must be a true believer. If you aim to manipulate followers, then you are not advising at all. So, I do not think the original case is a counterexample because I do not think that the case involves advice.
What about the case of a true believer? Here I am inclined to treat this case in the same fashion we treated the case of religious advice. If the advisee takes the advice and is happy he did, it is good advise. I suspect that some readers may find this unsatisfying. You might think it is wrong to claim that advising one to accept comforting myths can be good advice. However, our disagreement may be over whom we think it is worthwhile to advise and not over what counts as good advice. I take it that many deeply religious people are not hopeless judges of how to live. But that is a substantive commitment of mine and is not entailed by informed subjectivism. If you think that people who can only find meaning in life through religion are hopeless judges of how to live, then you and I disagree over whom to advise. We may not disagree over informed subjectivism. However, if you do not think these people are not hopeless judges, then I think you ought to defer to their judgments about their life.
Consider another variant of this objection. You give me advice that always includes the suggestion to take a pill that makes me happy I took the advice. 23 It seems like your advice may vary in quality even though the pill insures I always judge it favorably. Again, for this to be advice it must be the case that you are reasoning with me and not merely manipulating me. Here it seems to me we need to separate the pill taking advice from the other aspect of advice. That is, we have a conjunction of 'take the pill' and 'do X'. We can analyze each conjunct separately. Whether or not the advice to do X is good advice depends on how the advisee judges in the relevant cases according to informed subjectivism. Likewise, for the pill advice. It seems to me perfectly reasonable to claim that taking the pill is good advice if one is always happy that one took it. That seems to me a reasonable test for whether one ought to keep taking an anti-depressant. So I think when we separate the advice into distinct claims informed subjectivism gives the right response. But, to be clear we have not said anything about whether one ought to accept this advice. That will depend on what the alternatives are. If taking the pill is the only way to make a person happy, it seems to me that it is clearly good advice. Still advice can be good without being the best alternative. What advice is best and what advice we ought to accept is a matter of a comparative judgment of various alternatives. What we are trying to establish now is just what sort facts will we be relevant in the comparison.
What about cases involving death? Imagine a man is terminally ill and his future will be filled with constant and intense pain. Many think that euthanasia is a reasonable option in this situation and for the sake of argument I will accept that. At the other extreme, we have the temporarily depressed and suicidal. Clearly, it is bad advice to suggest suicide in this case. One might object to informed subjectivism because in these cases the quality of advice comes out as indeterminate. For informed subjectivism, the quality of advice depends on the probable future mental states of the advisee. On the assumption that there is no life after death, the quality of the advice is indeterminate because there are no future mental states. 24 But, the objection continues, it is clearly good advice in the euthanasia case and clearly bad advice in the suicide case. Hence, informed subjectivism is false.
It is simply not true that the advisee would consistently judge that acting on the advice is superior to not acting on the advice in either case. Recall that we have to consider possible worlds where the advisee accepts the advice and possible worlds where he rejects it. Now it is true if you take the option that results in death there will be no mental states to determine the quality of advice, but there will be if you reject it. In the euthanasia case, not acting on the advice will be choosing to live in intense constant pain and for almost all advisees that will be very bad advice. In the case of suicide, we have one option that the advisee he will be very glad he took. That makes it very good advice. So when we look at the full range of relevant cases we get the right result on informed subjectivism.
A final worry is that there has to be some constraint beyond the advisee's judgment. The thought is that surely an advisee can be mistaken and the theory does not allow for that. However, informed subjectivism does allow for certain sorts of mistakes. The determining factor is the probability of making a judgment, not the actual judgment.
The likelihood at issue is an objective feature of the world about which the advisee can be mistaken. It could be that the judgment was likely to be made but did not occur in the actual case. For instance, an improbable event may occur that prevents the expected result and that keeps the advisee from making the judgment. The theory is subjectivist in the sense that the quality of advice depends on the judgment of the advisee in a range of possible cases. However, there is a fact of the matter about that and the advisee can be mistaken about it in the actual case.
That being said, the theory does not allow that the advisee can be fundamentally mistaken. The quality of advice is determined by how the advisee is likely to judge. So if the action suggested by the advisor is of the sort that the advisee will not tend to judge favorably then it is not good advice. This is the core worry of those who favor a more objectivist account. Aren't some advisees fundamentally mistaken? To assess the strength of this objection it is helpful to consider the difference between informed subjectivism and the objectivist rival. The objectivist theory claims that a piece of advice is good advice to the extent it leads an advisee to do what the advisee has most reason to do. On the assumption that people are often glad that they did what they had most reason to do, the theories will typically coincide. The two cases where the theories come apart is a case where advice leads an advisee to later regret doing what he had most reason to do and a case where an advisee is pleased he did not do what he had most reason to do. Which theory is more plausible in these cases? 25 Recall, that we do not have to worry about insane or evil advisees. They are hopeless judges of how to live, so they are not potential advisees. We have to consider less egregious errors to run the objection. Imagine you come into five hundred dollars unexpectedly. You are not sure what to do. Ed tells you to invest it. Fran tells you to play the ponies.
Assume that Ed's advice will lead you to do what you have most reason to do. Now imagine a perfectly reliable oracle tells you two further facts. First, if you follow Ed's advice you will regret it. If you follow Fran's advice, you would be happy to do it all over again. Which do you choose? The one that is favored by the objective standard that you reject or the one favored by your own judgment?
Now again we have to assume such cases are possible even though they are far-fetched. Agents might be such that even when they do what they have most reason to do they will regret it. If an agent knows they are in this situation, they will be faced with choice between intentionally doing what they will regret and intentionally doing what they do not have most reason to do. Neither option is entirely satisfactory. For my part, I would choose the one favored by my own standards. The fact that I would judge differently if I were different would not move me. A better person might make a better decision, but I have to live with the person I am. So it seems my own standards are the ones I should use.
Individuals have a right to make up their own minds and pursue the life they please. When we agree to be advised they do not give this up. Of course, for advice to play its characteristic role in practical reason we need to let the advisor's wisdom play some role in determining the quality of advice. That is true, but in the cases at hand accepting the advice has altered the advisee's judgment. Yet, his judgment still does not conform to what he has most reason to do. In those cases, it would be overly paternalistic to deny the authority of the advisee's judgment. That may be permissible in cases of the severely deranged, but not for those we advise. When we go this though route we do not reason with the agent, but for the agent. That is not advice.
All I have tried to show here is that informed subjectivism is an attractive view. That does not entail that is true. Perhaps, there is some undeveloped theory that is superior. Nevertheless, I think we have seen that the nature of advice deserves more philosophical attention and informed subjectivism is plausible theory. It maintains that the right kind of reasons in advising are reasons that the advisee will take to be reasons when the advisee's judgment is informed by the relevant experience. The asymmetry of wisdom is respected by the fact that advisee's judgment is improved by the experience. The asymmetry of autonomy is respected by the fact that it is the advisee's judgment that ultimately determines the quality of advice. To agree to advise is to agree to limit the scopes of practical deliberation to considerations that your advisee, in the right conditions, will agree are reasons. 26 James Madison University fleminpj@jmu.edu